Some people immediately accept the existence of ghosts, while others have to sleep for weeks with the lights on. Oddly enough, of the actors, it is the action heroes who lose their presence of mind when they are faced with the inexplicable.
Jean Claude Van Damme, "Mister Muscle from Brussels," admits that he was terrified by the appearance of a ghost in the bathroom mirror:
“Suddenly I was seized with a chill. I turned and thought, "I had a vision or something." It was bluish-white in color, and the body was like fog. From that moment on, I believed in ghosts."
Jean-Claude Van Damme (right) and Nicolas Cage. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Movie star Nicolas Cage, who played the brave guy in films such as Face Off, Windwalkers and The Gun Baron, admits he saw a ghost at his uncle Francis Ford Coppola's home.
“I lived in an attic where bats scratched between the walls. One day I was almost asleep, when suddenly the door opened, and in the doorway appeared the silhouette of a woman with a high haircut, black as pitch. I thought it was my aunt who came to say goodbye to me at night. So I said, “Good night,” and she said nothing in response.
Then she walked towards me. At first, I froze with fear, and then I screamed heartbreakingly and threw my pillow at her. Then she disappeared. Can I claim that I saw a ghost? I still don't know. But I saw something that shocked me."
The hero of The Matrix, Keanu Reeves, may have been the messianic hero who saved the world in virtual space, but he still wakes up in horror when, in a nightmare, he dreams of meeting a ghost that actually happened to him as a child.
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“I was living in New Jersey when one day I saw and felt the presence of a ghost. I remember a figure in a double-breasted white suit appeared in my room. But neither body nor legs were visible. This something appeared in my room and then disappeared.
I just silently looked at this phenomenon, and then turned my gaze to my nanny, who was in the same shock. I couldn't sleep for a long time afterwards, and I still see that figure in my dreams and nightmares."
Keanu Reeves (left) and Richard Dreyfus. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Richard Dreyfuss, star of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, met a ghost who cured him of his cocaine addiction.
“In the late 1970s, when I had a car accident, I felt on the edge. Since then, the image of a little girl has appeared to me every night. I could not get rid of this vision. It became clearer every day, and I couldn't understand what the hell was going on. I had no children, I was a bachelor.
Then I realized: perhaps it was my daughter who had not yet been born, or perhaps it was also the image of a child who, fortunately, did not die when I had an accident. I immediately sobered up. I still don't have a child, but look, it worked."
Even the queen of thrillers can get scared when she comes face to face with an inexplicable phenomenon in real life. The Scream star Neve Campbell was convinced of this in her own experience when she bought a house in Hollywood without checking its history.
“It turns out that before I bought the house, there was a murder six years ago. Friends were visiting me, and I went into the kitchen, leaving them in the living room. At that moment a woman entered the living room, and at first they thought that it was me who came back so quickly. At that time I was in the kitchen, which means that they saw a woman who was killed there. The previous owner did an exorcism, but I don't think it helped."
It is rumored that just months after the move, former celebrity couple Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman were forced to leave their dream home, an eighteenth-century mansion in Snydens Landing, New York, due to the constant occurrence of unexplained incidents.
It seems they were too frightened by what they saw and experienced in this house, because they did not want to think about it even after they returned to their peaceful old apartment in Manhattan.
Uma Thurman and Tim Robbins. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Some might think that living in a home that used to be a church guarantees peace and tranquility. However, Tim Robbins, the star of the psychological drama Jacob's Ladder, and the screenwriter and director of the film (ironically) titled Dead Man Walking, hastily escaped from his new apartment, which was clearly inhabited by evil spirits.
“It was in Los Angeles in 1984. I just moved to a new apartment. It was located in a former church, which was reconstructed and turned into a residential building. I had two cats. I had not even had time to unpack my things, they were still in boxes throughout the apartment.
One evening I came home, it was dark and the cats behaved very strangely, as if they were very scared. The atmosphere in the room was eerie, with ghosts in the room. Then I looked at the wall, and it was swarming with cockroaches. I left there the next day."
From Paul Roland's The Big Book of Ghosts and Ghosts